Sunday, June 12, 2011

Loew's Journal Square

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Loew's Journal Square, a set on Flickr.

OK, I have a real post lined up, one about the end of a much-loved piece of gear (sniff!)...but there's stuff I need to do, so in the meantime - check out the Movie PALACE! Unbelievable. A friend at work told me about the showing of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad that they were having. Journal Square is a long way to go to see a movie (especially when my own voyage started at Sebago - I traded in Cold Spring for helping out with the Open Paddle, which ended up being lovely), but seeing a stop-motion classic in a Grand Movie Palace with a Pipe Organ That Rises From the Stage And Rotates Magestically sounded like it would be worth the trek.

I was on the fence for a day about Cold Spring, but poor Beth, our trip-leader coordinator for the Open Paddles, was having a terrible time lining up leaders. That made for a nice tiebreaker, and I was SO glad I went to see Sinbad - I knew that moviegoing used to be a much grander experience in the earlier days of the industry but oh my gosh, I never imagined anything quite like this!

4 comments:

Frankie Perussault said...

It's set up like a church!

bonnie said...

Yes, a Cathedral of the Cinema!

I'm even more excited about the restoration of sister "Wonder Theater" Loew's Kings, on Flatbush, a nice walk from where I live. I saw that one for the first time in August 2007, when we had some tornadoes in Brooklyn that pretty much shut down the subways out to my neck of the woods. I called my boss from the subway station, he actually knew more about it than the token booth clerks did & told me to just get to work whenever I could. I decided to walk down Flatbush and that was the first time I saw it. I took a bunch of pictures, I should dig back & see if I could find them. Gorgeous old place, a real eyecatcher even long-shuttered. In 2010 it was announced that the theater is being saved - it's being restored to it's 1929 appearance for use as an arts center. It'll be reopening in 2014 - sounds like a terrific addition to the neighborhood!

O Docker said...

Hokey smokes! Nice stuff.

Great story of how the theater was saved from the wrecking ball here. Amazing that one of those grass-roots campaigns was actually a success, but it took a ton of volunteer work to make it happen.

Maybe there's still hope for the South Street Seaport Museum.

bonnie said...

Great article, I hadn't made it that far.

Another interesting fact from the ever-so-short Wikipedia article - Loew's built 5 "Wonder Theaters" in this area and all 5 of them are actually still standing.